The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 2

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. McBride.” The velvety voice sounded quite different without its flippant jocularity. “A pleasure to meet you both.”

  The glance he threw over his shoulder as he followed her out of the room was grave with respect and, Conor thought, sympathy.

  2

  Following Frank’s departure, he argued with his mother as they had not done in years—in fact, not since the last time they had discussed his brother. He didn’t know how to measure the “extended stretch of time” Frank had indicated, but a glimmer of inherited prescience told him it would be longer than he could bear. There were any number of reasons he couldn’t afford to be gone for very long; only one of them really mattered. In fear and frustration, Conor paced the living room, storming at her.

  “Why must I do this, Ma? Thomas is a criminal and a loser, and God only knows what he’s up to that has MI6 over here looking for my help. Let him lie in the hole he’s dug for himself. He’s caused us enough trouble.”

  “You don’t mean that, Conor,” his mother said. “He’s your brother.”

  “And don’t I wish he wasn’t. He nearly ruined us, in case you don’t remember, and it’s been almost six years of my life and every penny I could earn to undo that damage.”

  “I never believed it.” She turned away and walked toward the kitchen. “I don’t believe it now. He wouldn’t have done it on purpose. There must have been some reason he—”

  “He’s a thief, Ma! He stole grant money meant for poorer farmers and disappeared with it. He blackened our name. He nearly sent me to jail and the two of us into bankruptcy. Now he’s shoveled up some new pile of shite that I’m supposed to dive into? Well, forgive me if I don’t leap at the chance. I don’t mean to spend the rest of my life following my brother into trouble. Isn’t it enough, already, what he’s taken? Can you think of anything I’ve left to give up, now?”

  His mother hesitated in mid-stride as if struck, her thin shoulders slumping in defeat and sorrow. He would have given almost anything to have those last words back again, rattling irritably around in his head, maybe, but hurting only himself. After all, he was more to blame than anyone was, after Thomas. He’d signed his name to everything. If he’d paid a bit more attention . . .

  His anger dissolved in a sigh of regret. The argument was over. It had been an academic exercise, anyway. They both knew he was going, and they both knew why. Despite the undeniable evidence, his brother’s crime was a continued source of grief and confusion for both of them, inconsistent with the person they thought he was. Conor wondered what kind of tale Frank had in store for him in London—another half-baked financial scheme or something worse? It seemed unlikely that the UK’s secret intelligence service would be stirring itself for a simple case of grant fraud.

  In the end, he had to leave it all in Phillip’s hands—the farm, the house, his mother’s life—and when Conor presented the situation a few days later, he saw his own dubious misgivings reflected back at him.

  “It’s a lot to ask of you, Pip,” he said, watching Phillip’s face uneasily. “Tell me now if you don’t think you can do it.”

  “Will you ever leave off with that?” Phillip’s cheeks reddened. “It isn’t that. Your ma has been good to me; it’s no bother. I was just thinking that it all sounds a bit . . . well, crazy. Who is this fecker, after all? You think he knows where your brother is or how to find him?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Conor sighed. “Everything that’s to do with my brother turns out to be crazy, it seems. I don’t know if I’ll find him or not, but I feel like I have to try.”

  As he wrote out instructions and prepared, they all pretended it was for just a few days, but on the day he left, his mother dropped the charade. He could tell the pain was bad that morning, and the cool damp of the farmhouse didn’t help. He placed a lounge chair on the flagstone terrace behind the house so the late summer sunshine could warm her a bit while he took a quick hike into the upper pasture with his violin.

  “Don’t go so far that I can’t hear. I’ll want to remember how it sounded.”

  Her soft voice was almost carried away by the morning breeze rolling up from the ocean, but he caught it just in time. Pausing on the sloping hill, he turned to look back, a sudden ache in his throat preventing any reply for several seconds.

  “I’ll stay close.” His husky reassurance was too faint for her to hear, but he gave her a nod and a wave of acknowledgment.

  He climbed a little farther to a corner alcove created by one of the many intersections in the pasture’s network of stone walls. The spot was one of his favorites. Quiet and intimate, the little corner was sheltered enough to keep the sound from disappearing but airy enough to let it wander among the wall’s cracks and boulders in their endless variety of shapes and sizes.

  Conor carefully lifted the rare and valuable Pressenda from its case for their final session together. After some internal debate, he had decided to entrust it to a climate-controlled vault at the local bank rather than leaving it to absorb the variable Irish weather without his regular attentions.

  It was impossible to explain the relationship he had with this violin. He’d spent years learning to understand it, adapting to its quirks and changing moods and allowing it to lead him to whatever magic it wanted to project on any given day. It was a conversation that never grew old—one that engaged all his senses. His jawline could register the occasional, temperamental buzz before his ear had discerned it, and from the range of breathed aromas in the wood—thick and loamy in the damp, sharp and spicy in the heat—he could predict the adjustments needed to coax out the sound he wanted.

  Lifting it to his shoulder, Conor brought the bow down across its strings in a light, affectionate greeting. A bright answering chord rose from the instrument, pressing up through the morning air. He started with vibrato exercises to loosen his hand and then settled in to the rhythm of his standard technical practice. The scale for the day was the four-octave G major, and the technique was legato. The musical articulation calling for the seamless transition between notes was one he could easily lose himself in, endlessly experimenting with posture, arm movement, and wrist angles while losing all track of time in the process.

  Today he was more mindful of the clock and of his mother, who was waiting to hear something more interesting than the G major scale. He limited the practice to ten minutes and spent the rest of the hour running through a number of airs and traditional songs that he knew she would like. He finished by switching genres to play Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, an appropriate piece for that day’s concentration on legato.

  The Vocalise was a complex composition concealed within a simple melody. It meandered in a stream-of-consciousness flow, and with a continuous motion, Conor’s bow pulled out phrases that looped and followed each other so closely that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the next began. It was a gorgeous but elusive narrative that escaped entirely in its final seconds, leaving a single note hanging in the air until it thinned and faded.

  Leaning against the wall, Conor cradled the Pressenda in the crook of his arm and stared out at the ocean without seeing it, unable to make himself move. At last, he pulled the case forward, gently lowered the violin into its velvet-lined cocoon, and closed the lid.

  Back on the terrace, his mother appeared to be sleeping, but her eyes opened immediately when he approached and touched her arm. A silent understanding passed between them before he spoke.

  “Just off now. I left the mobile with Phillip. I’ll ring you when I get to the hotel.”

  She passed her fingers lightly over his face, pushing away the dark hair that fell across his forehead. “I’m thinking you need a haircut.” Her shadowed eyes grew bright with tears. “Isn’t it silly? Such a foolish thing to be saying to my fine, grown son when he’s come to say good-bye to me.”

  Conor lowered his face, afraid he would not be able to look at her again before leaving. With a fierce tightening of his jaw, he raised his he
ad and forced out an answering smile. “I’ll get it done in London. I’ll come home looking so grand, you won’t know me.”

  His mother sat up and took his face in her hands, and he felt their familiar, tingling heat. Holding him in a firm grip, she stared into his eyes, whispering a fragment of prayer. Her hands traveled down under his chin and rested protectively against his neck and chest. She closed her eyes, her brow creased in concentration. There was a flavor of ceremony in her movements, and he had witnessed it often enough to know what was happening.

  “What do you see?” he whispered.

  “Pain.” The calmness of her voice contrasted with the disquieting pronouncement. “Pain that a mother should be allowed to stop, but I won’t be. I’m afraid it will be a long journey for you, my little love, but he needs you. Without you, he’ll be lost. He’ll be too afraid. He mustn’t be lost, Conor. You must tell Thomas to come to me.”

  He eased her back into the chair and kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry, Ma. He won’t be lost. I’ll find him and tell him you’re waiting here for him.”

  He winced at the sudden strength of her grip on his wrist. His mother’s dark eyes, so like his own, swallowed him with their intensity. “You’ll know what to do,” she whispered. “Tell him I’m waiting.”

  He arrived at the hotel in London in the late afternoon with just enough time to drop his bag on the bed before venturing downstairs again. He walked into the Library Bar and wished he had taken an extra minute to make himself more presentable. The dark, paneled room was sprinkled with smartly dressed examples of the moneyed class languidly getting started on the cocktail hour. His tatty wool sweater and crumpled pants provided a contrast that the host in the doorway did not appear to appreciate.

  “May I help you, sir?” he asked, nostrils flaring. Conor wondered if he might be getting a whiff of something off the sweater.

  “Thanks. I’m just meeting someone here.” His Irish accent produced an immediate effect. He wryly watched the man’s demeanor become even more glacial, but before their relationship could further deteriorate, Conor saw Frank waving to him from the end of the bar. He slipped past the frigid little character with an apologetic shrug.

  As he might have expected, Frank was immaculately dressed and wrinkle-free. He was smiling with pleasure at the sight of him. “Ah, Conor,” he said, offering a firm handshake. “Welcome to London and to the Lanesborough. All settled in? Room all right?”

  “It’s very grand. A bit rich for a government budget, isn’t it?”

  “Not as rich as you might think. We’ve had a room here for years. Long story. You might get chivvied along, though, if someone more important turns up, so enjoy it while you can.”

  “I might get chivvied along anyway,” Conor said, observing the glances along the bar aimed in his direction.

  “Nonsense. What can we get you to drink?” Almost imperceptibly, Frank raised an index finger from the lustrous surface of the bar, and a bartender instantly responded.

  Conor hesitated. He was panting for a pint of stout but thought it was what everyone within earshot was expecting the “Paddy” to order. He hitched his chin at the frothy cocktail sitting at Frank’s elbow. “One of those will be fine,” he said shortly.

  The icy drink soon appeared. At least it was cold. He lifted the glass and took a sip, squinting against a withering tartness.

  “It’s called a whiskey sour.” Frank’s tone was professorial.

  Conor set the glass on the bar with a grimace. “I’m aware of that. I didn’t know anyone over the age of eighteen drank them. That’s the last time I did, and they’re as foul as I remember.”

  Frank laughed. “Would you rather have a Guinness?”

  “I would.”

  With the earthy, dark elixir soothing his taste buds, he began to feel a bit more at ease in his surroundings and a bit more kindly toward his host. Frank lit a cigarette and offered one to Conor, sliding the box and lighter across the bar.

  “Here is your first lesson. Given the choice, it is advisable to do what is expected of you, because it is easiest and—most of the time—it is safest.”

  Conor lit a cigarette and passed the lighter back. “Should I be getting out my notebook, now?”

  “Not yet. Plenty of time for that.”

  “Is there?” Leaning back on the stool, Conor aimed a doubtful squint through the smoke. “I’d have to disagree with you there. I need to know how long this is going to take. I don’t have a lot of time to be dawdling around London in flash hotels. I’ve got things to attend to back home that won’t wait.”

  “Yes, of course,” Frank said. “There’s another year to go paying back the farm assistance funds Thomas chiseled out of the European Union and a few more payments to the solicitor who kept you out of bankruptcy, and out of prison. We know about all that.”

  “Yeah, well there are a few other things that I’ve—”

  “Your mother’s cancer. We know about that, too.”

  Conor’s face became very still. He took a long pull at his drink and withdrew from the conversation, letting his eyes travel vacantly around the room.

  Frank’s unctuous manner dissolved. He put a finger to his temple and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Conor. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No.” Conor cut him short. “Listen to me. You want to show off how much you know about me and how you’ve studied every bit of me going back to the first solid food I ever ate. Fair play to you. It’s about what I expected, and it doesn’t particularly bother me. I’d be grateful, though, if you didn’t spit out the details of my life as if they were just so much trivia.”

  He spoke without raising his voice, but its clipped intensity brought a flush to the agent’s face. Frank ground his cigarette into an ashtray and folded his hands together, staring at them as the silence grew between them.

  “It doesn’t come naturally, you know,” he said, finally. “A breezy disdain for the concerns of decent people takes years of practice. One needs time to . . . harden the callous. I apologize. It was unforgivable.”

  Conor’s posture relaxed. He didn’t trust him, but he found it difficult not to like the rare old dazzler with his glossy hair and spit-shined shoes. He allowed himself a small grin. “It’s not unforgivable, just bloody rude. Order another round, and I may lose the urge to fight about it.”

  The next round appeared. It soon grew apparent that Frank had resolved to avoid “shop talk” on this first evening, which left them with limited avenues for interaction. The subject of classical music proved easiest to pursue—an area in which their incongruous personalities found common ground.

  At the end of an hour, Conor was no better informed about his brother’s situation than when he’d arrived, but when Frank rose to leave, he indicated he would be more forthcoming when they met for dinner the following night.

  “We’ll go to my club in Portman Square. I’ll pick you up at seven, and for God’s sake, wear a jacket and tie.”

  “I didn’t bring a jacket and tie.”

  “What on earth did you bring, apart from your decaying sweater?” Frank’s lip curled, surveying the offending garment.

  Conor grinned. “I’ve got a fairly respectable pair of khakis.” With a sense of déjà vu, he watched as Frank removed a card from his jacket, wrote something on the back of it, and handed it to him.

  “Go to the first address on Jermyn Street at eleven o’clock tomorrow. Quinn will deal with the evening attire. When you’re done there, go to Bethany at the Grosvenor Gardens address. Her assignment is to outfit you for traveling. I’ll ring them both in the morning, so they’ll be expecting you.”

  “Outfit me for traveling where?” Conor asked.

  “Tomorrow.” Frank brushed a manicured hand over Conor’s arm. “We’ll have a good dinner and a bottle of wine, and I promise we will tackle all the details. Now I’m late. Don’t forget—seven o’clock. I trust Quinn implicitly. You’ll look suitably stylish, I’m sure.”

  “Styli
sh,” Conor repeated, watching the silver-headed figure glide through the room and out the door. Turning back to the bar, he wiggled his empty glass at the bartender and was pleased to see him respond to his signal just as quickly as to Frank’s.

  He watched the nitrogen bubbles churning in his glass, and when the cloudy brown mixture had settled into a uniform darkness, he raised it to his lips with a salute to the room and its stylish patrons.

  “Slainté. Here’s to your health . . . and mine as well, God help me.”

  3

  The pretty blonde server was back again. She lifted the bottle of mineral water from the table and topped off Conor’s glass, offering a coy sidelong glance as she poured.

  “Is everything all right, sir? Can we tempt you with anything else this evening?”

  He offered a meaningful smile. “Ah, well, you can always tempt me.”

  “We’re absolutely fine for the moment.” Frank’s assurance had a waspish edge. “You’ve been extremely efficient with the water service—yes, thank you for noticing my glass as well— it’s quite commendable. But I believe we are equal to the task now.”

  With a parting smile for Conor and a haughty look at Frank, the woman replaced the bottle on the table and drifted to the other side of the dining room.

  “It’s the suit you know,” Frank said, eyes glittering. Conor gave a grunt of laughter. “Don’t laugh, it’s true. You cut quite a dashing figure when you care to try. A pity the entire kit has to be returned tomorrow. I knew Quinn wouldn’t disappoint, but I am surprised he trusted you with cufflinks.”

  “Contrary to what you seem to believe, it’s not the first time I’ve worn a suit. I even have two fairly sharp tuxedos in a closet at home.”